


Trilogy

by sarahxxxlovey



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banshee Lydia Martin, Cause stydia is endgame duh, Cheating, Dark, Drunk Stiles Stilinski, Emotional Tether(s), Endgame, Endgame Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Happy Ending, Infidelity, Its happy tho, Lydia Martin Loves Stiles Stilinski, Lydia cheats on her boyfriend with Stiles but it's a happy ending, Past Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Smut, Soulmates, Stiles Stilinski Loves Lydia Martin, Stydia, idk where this came from, stydia smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 22:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15228798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahxxxlovey/pseuds/sarahxxxlovey
Summary: "It’s Thursday and that means the same thing every week: Justin goes to bowling and she goes to Stiles."





	Trilogy

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy a venture into my dark mind. x

 

* * *

“Not on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday… but on Thursday, Thursday.”

* * *

 

She knows she shouldn’t do this anymore. She knows that doing this is probably one of the worst things that you can do to a person, that this has the potential to break people, that this is something that could haunt them years from now. The weight of her actions swirl in her stomach, heavy in her gut. It feels shameful and horrible.

Or at least, it should.

The fact that she doesn’t feel guilt should make her  _ more _  guilty, but it doesn’t. She should feel awful, but instead she feels nothing.

If anything, it makes her more desperate for it. She probably  _ is _  just a horrible person, apathetic and cold, an empty, worthless shell of the person that she had developed into with the help of her friends in years past. But things had changed and she regressed towards the mean, pushed herself back into the place that she was before Allison and before Stiles and back to the safety of not caring about people.

It had changed because people had left her and she was all alone again, the whole in her heart bigger than she’d ever felt. She ran away and slid back into her old patterns, her old ways.

And still, she does. Repeatedly.

She knows that she shouldn’t, but still she does.

It’s been going on for so long that she barely remembers how it started. So many months ago that it the unit for counting the time turned from a month into a year.

Deep down, she knows that she really is a monster doing monstrous things, a festering wound swallowing and consuming all of her actions and everyone around her. She drags other people down with her, people that she loves, the people she cares about, people that have sacrificed and fought for her. She lets every wrongdoing and hurt from her past force people away, sequestering herself in a world of ignorant carefree attitude, pulling herself away from intimacy and friendship and pouring herself into image and popularity.

Sometimes it feels like pain and regret are her best friends, the years of supernatural and scars catching up with her, twisting reality in her mind until she feels like she’s going insane. There are so many things she does wrong, so many self-destructive patterns and behaviors that she could never in a million years admit to the shrink her mom forced her to go to. Everything she does leads to bad. Bad girlfriend, bad friend, bad daughter.

Bad person.

In the depths of her soul, in the desperation she feels, he’s the weekend of her life. He’s the time that the world falls away. Her escape.

It’s Thursday and it means the same thing every week.

Justin goes to bowling and she goes to Stiles.

* * *

She and Justin have been together for fourteen months.

Fourteen weak, pitiful, unsatisfying months of piled lies and sneaking around.

When she moved to Boston, she left everything having to do with California and Beacon Hills behind. The pain of high school, the pain of losing her best friend, the pain of unrequited love, the pain of her crummy parents, the pain of being isolated and alone. She started new and didn’t turn back, forcing herself forward with every A she earned at MIT and every professor she captivated with her age and intelligence She ignored calls for months. She threw herself into work and didn’t pay one shred of attention to men until after she’d graduated from undergrad and was suddenly living by herself in the middle of a huge city with no friends and no companions.

Justin walked into her life like a dull, dreary ray of sunshine, illuminating just enough that she could make out what she needed. She didn’t have to think about their relationship, worry about whether he was going to come home or whether he was going to be randomly attacked. The dangers of his job seemed miniscule compared to arrows and werewolves and Nogitsune.

He was an NFL football player. Rich. Oblivious.

Simple.

The relationship started easily enough. She had spotted him across a bar while looking for a one night stand, desperate for a way to feel something other than dead inside, hoping that incessant praise from some jock would satiate that desire.

She was attracted to everything that he was and everything wasn’t; being blonde and burly, the all-American boy, it meant he didn’t have golden brown eyes, dark hair, and a smile that melted her insides. She sauntered and flirted, batting her eyelashes and talking about her research until he was putty in her hands, melting to the floor in front of her. A few months later, she’d moved into his high rise apartment and a few months after that, when he got drafted to a new team, they’d packed up again and moved back to her home state, a mere thirty minutes from where she grew up.

He’s rough around the edges, aggressive and mean on occasion. He makes up for it with elaborate gestures, attempting to patch the holes that he creates in his anger with expensive gifts and vacations. They went to Paris for five days after they got in their first fight, screaming at each other across the dinner table after she’d burned dinner. They’d gone shopping on the Champs Elysees, bought her a new Chanel bag, and then she felt better. When they moved and he called her a bitch for saying that he was wasting money on renovations, he bought her a diamond tennis bracelet.

The jewels feel like a shackle around her wrist, the weight a constant reminder of the decisions she’d made for herself, the bed that she’d made that she was now forced to lie in.

They go to the best restaurants and the newest lounges and bars. Sometimes it’s the last place she wants to be, but she goes with him just to feel the jealous glares of less attractive girls from across the room, the glittering appeal of envious eyes and unwavering attention. She drags his lips to hers and grinds on him until she feels the vodka in her system, replacing one vice with another, escaping into the flashing neon lights and the pulsing beat of the bass from the crummy electronic music.

He makes her feel special, diamonds twinkling on her wrist, bottle service with professional athletes surrounding her, the glowing stardom of her fifteen minutes in the spotlight. He pays for everything and she doesn’t have to think twice about a single decision that she makes when she’s with him, numb and cold to their whole relationship.

She didn’t even feel enough for him that she felt like she had to tell him about her past, about the way that she could scream, about her best friends in high school and the kind of pack they were in.

They’d moved back to California, she and Justin, and it took all of weeks for her to give in to the pull she feels towards Stiles.

* * *

She’s bent over the side of his bed, pulsing around him as he slams into her from behind, his hand buried in her hair as she moans despite herself.

_ It shouldn’t feel this good. It shouldn’t feel this good. _

_ It shouldn’t feel like this. _

She’s been thinking about this all week, squeezing her legs together during her commute as her thoughts wandered to the feeling of him inside of her. Her mind continually runs through all of the things that she wants to do to him and with him and for him. She can’t stop thinking about the way that his fingers ghost her skin, the way that he breathes her name as he slides into her. She’s buzzing with electricity and lust, every inch of her desperate to feel his touch, to feel close to him, to feel alive in the way only he can draw out of her.

He runs his hand along her side, down the dip of her waist, the sensitive skin over her hip bones, grabbing harshly as he pushes into her and tugs harder on her hair.

“Fucking hell, Lydia,” Stiles breathes, hot against her neck.

Normally he’s soft, tender. He touches her with gentle movements, with light strokes of his fingers and teasing contact. Sometimes she wants more, but he looks so blissed out in those moments that she gives in. She can see the disbelief in his eyes sometimes. The disbelief that she’s actually writhing underneath him evident in everything he does, like a constant string trailing behind him.

She shouldn’t like it and it shouldn’t feel so right when it’s so wrong, but every Thursday, including tonight, she exists only for him. This is the only time when she’s truly connected to herself.

She exists only on Thursday.

Tonight she’s his, but he’s different; she can feel the tension, the aggression, the frustration deep in his bones. She can see it in the lines between his eyebrows. It’s in his shoulders, his arms, the way that his hands clutched at the sheets and her hair and her skin. She can feel it in how tightly wound he is against her, vibrating with something stronger and deeper than lust. Something is wrong, she can feel it. He’s punishing her for something and she hates that it feels so good.

_ It shouldn’t feel this good. _

Her heart pounds in her ears, the beat of it firing furiously in her chest. The thought of losing him overwhelms her. Her voice catches as she talks dirty to him and she gives into the feeling of his fingers, floating above herself as he reaches around to play with her clit.

She struggles to hold onto the high that she feels as he’s inside of her. She can feel herself losing it. She needs more.

“More,” she begs.

“God, Lyds,” he says, his voice tight and choked.

She knows him well. He’s close. She knows she can push him over the edge.

“Stiles,” she moans, turning over her shoulder to meet his gaze, green meets brown and sparks fly. She knows that her voice saying his name, breathy and deep and husky, will get him there.

“Lydia,” he sighs roughly, his voice harsh, gripping her hips as he thrusts particularly hard.

He moans her name as he cums and she sighs with relief. It’s a sign, a sign that he still feels for her like he always has.

He rolls off of her and looks ashamed. He wipes at the sweat on his brow.

“We have to stop this,” he says, his voice soft and defeated.

It’s the first time he’s said anything like it.

She nods and pulls the sheet up to cover her bare chest, biting her lip.

The rug is being pulled out from underneath her.

* * *

When she gets home the next week, perfume sprayed in the car to cover the smell of sex, Justin is sitting on the couch in the house he pays the rent for.

“Hey,” he says, changing the channel. He doesn’t even look at her when she enters.

“Hi,” she replies.

“How’s Malia?” he asks a little too nonchalantly.

“I wasn’t with Malia,” she says slowly, setting her purse down on the counter. The marble countertops that he’d insisted the landlord install.

“Oh.” He looks frustrated at her admitting it, like he wanted the lie. He recovers quickly. “Errands?”

“Yeah. I’m seeing her tomorrow though.”

He sighs and she crosses her arms, gearing up for the fight that she knows is coming.

“I love you but I don’t know why you still feel like you have to hang out with her,” he says with a scowl.

“What?”

“ _ I’m _  supposed to be your best friend. You don’t need anyone else.”

“She’s been my friend for almost ten years,” she says, finding herself defensive at the thought of someone else questioning her friendships.

(It’s just another reason she can’t stand him sometimes, sometimes all the time.)

“So? We’ve been dating for over a year and living together for nearly that long too.”

“I…” she looks at him and wonders when it got to be that long. “I’m seeing Malia tomorrow.”

“Whatever,” he says with an eye roll. “Have fun with your high school bestie while the rest of us are living in the adult world.”

The name Allison rises up in her throat, she wants to scream it until she cries, but the name would mean nothing to him, just like telling him that she no longer has her high school best friend would mean nothing to him too. She turns to look at him and decides it isn’t worth it.

Instead, she goes to the bathroom and washes the makeup off of her face and Stiles from her mouth.

* * *

Three weeks later, another Thursday comes.

She re-curls her hair after the long day of work and paints her lips pinky red like strawberries. She tries to forget the notifications that she saw on Stiles’ phone last week, notifications from girls like “Amanda” and “Jessica.” She ignores the fact that she kissed Justin mere minutes ago, that they fucked last night and that she’s going to sleep next to him tonight.

She wonders if Justin knows. She wonders if he even cares.

Her thoughts wander back to Stiles. They always do.

She selfishly wants to look beautiful for him. Perfect to him. She wants to burn her memory into his skull, to make him addicted to even the thought of her, to have every other girl pale in comparison. She doesn’t know why it gets worse all the time, the feeling that she needs him. She wants him to need her like that too.

She pulls on a skirt shorter than the one she was wearing before and changes her thong to one that matches her lipstick. Now two of his favorite parts of her match.

She wants to erase the memory of any other girl from his brain.

* * *

He’s expecting her, sitting on his hand-me-down couch with a beer in his hand and a heavy look in his eyes. The door is unlocked and she comes unannounced. It makes it easier to pretend like this didn’t happen as frequently as it really did.

She leads him to the bedroom without a word, wondering how many times her feet had walked this stretch of floor, if underneath the worn rug there are her small footprints ingrained in the wood. He’s hesitant, pulling back on her hand a little bit but the thought of not having this, the one part of her week she feels okay, her Thursday, pushes her forward and she closes the door behind them.

He’s hesitant and she wonders how long he’ll be able to try to stop them before he gives in to the pull, too.

As she lies down on his bed and spreads her legs, all of his resolve disappears before her eyes. She knows that she looks like an angel to him, strawberry blonde hair glowing like a halo in the light of his bedside lamp. She crumbles underneath his gaze, every wall falling and every defense melting as his eyes travel up and down every inch of her legs, her arms, her neck.

He peels off her clothes gently, the zipper at the side of her skirt catching slightly and he patiently slides it down. He licks along the cleavage exposed as he unbuttons her shirt and unhooks her bra. He slides the heeled booties off of her feet, kissing at her calf, at the tender skin on the back of her knee as he spreads her legs. She is putty in his hands, his to mold.

He leans over and kisses her softly, settling his weight against her. She sighs with relief, the way that she feels complete and whole and alive when she’s with him, when she kisses him, when he’s close to her. She feels him deeply and wants to feel more, wrapping her legs around him, pulling him closer, running her fingers through his hair, doing what she’d dreamt of all week as he kisses her.

The kissing was still fairly new, the months in single digits, and she felt like she should have listened to Julia Roberts in that movie all those years ago. Kissing feels too personal, like there’s a connection between them that she can’t have with anyone else.

When their lips touch, he gives her everything, all of him. Every kiss, he pours his soul into. It scares her and excited her and travels down her spine to between her legs in a way that’s so delicious she can’t help but roll her hips against him.

It hadn’t started like this, with soft kisses pressed to her lips and his fingers running gently down her arms to hold her hands. She had drank too much and blew him in the bathroom at their best friends’ engagement party. He’d sat her on the sink and fingered her until she came all over his hand.

Not much had changed. They’d had sex in the stairwell at the wedding, then again when she snuck into his hotel room  with the key she stole from his pocket, an hour after Justin had gone to sleep.

She wonders if Stiles feels drunk like she does, electrified in every cell of her body, powerful and in control. If she let herself feel all of it. It washes over her in waves, peaking like her pleasure does. The two sensations are connected; the more she gives herself over to him, the higher she gets.

What would happen if she truly gave in? All she can think about is the if’s. If she let him do more than just fuck her on a weeknight before she went back to her boyfriend. If she let herself give him everything. If she let him be her best friend. If she admitted how she felt, deep down in the hollow parts of her chest. If…

“You can have it all,” she says, pulling away from his kiss, her eyes heavy with the pressure between her legs. Her voice hitches in her throat and in a moment, her desperation for him doubles, feeling herself get even hotter as he grinds against her.

He rests his hands on her thighs, his thumbs moving without thinking of it, stroking the skin there, and he kneels between her legs, pulling her red, lacy underwear to the side and breathing against her. She can feel how wet she is, how he must be able to tell that he gets her like this. She’s already wet when she gets there and she knows that he can tell. He’s the only one and he doesn’t even know it, or maybe he does.

“Stiles,” she moans as she wiggles.

“Tell me you won’t regret this,” he says and her mind flashes to the small arrow tattoo on her hip-bone, to the scar on her ribs. She wonders if the marks he leaves on her skin will burn her insides and shame her like the permanent ones do.

“I won’t, I promise,” she says, desperately for his tongue on her.

He leans in and she feels bliss again, the world fading out and in and out again as she focuses on the feeling on his tongue against her clit.

He is practiced at this, well-versed in the little movements that her body makes without direction from her brain. He loves pushes her buttons, loves making her squirm. He knows exactly what to do to make her moan and squirm and he uses it to his advantage, sending her barreling for the edge without any regard for her comfort. She wants it to last and struggles against it but can’t, his tongue flicking consistently against her core, incessantly driving on.

She can practically see his head swell up with the knowledge that only he can do this to her, that he’s the best lover she’s ever had.

“Tell me I’m better,” he says as he bites at her thigh. He slides a finger into her and it fills her like heaven. She’s waited for this all week.

“The best,” she can’t help but say at the feeling, full in a way that was only teasing, yearning to feel full instead of empty, overflowing instead of hollow. It’s true, he is the best she’s ever had, but she knows she wouldn’t say it unless his lips were inches away from her, unless she was in some sort of state of undress, unless she was baring herself in front of his eyes and tongue and fingers. It’s easier to admit something when he’s staring between her legs.

Something about him makes her lose all touch with reality. He’s always driven her crazy, but it’s a completely different connection now, like a tether holding her down and pushing her up. Maybe it’s the sex or the impending orgasm or the fact that she knows he’s in love with her. She is drunk off him and drunk off his presence, the smell of his sheets around her and the feeling of his rough hands palming the smooth skin of her thighs.

He licks at her clit and she moans as he slides another finger inside of her.

She needs him inside of her.

She pushes him down onto the bed and flips over on top of him, pulling his jeans and boxers down in one determined wiggle, just enough that she can sink down on top of him suddenly with a sigh of relief. She feels complete again.

His eyes roll back in his head and he grabs her hips, digging his fingers into the skin deep enough to leave marks, setting the pace that she wants. He knows what she likes, what gets her there and never hesitates to give it to her when it’s what he wants too. She goes with him and moves on top of him, riding him at the pace that he set and feeling higher and higher with each back and forth.

It shouldn’t feel this good. It shouldn’t feel better than her boyfriend. She shouldn’t look forward to a quickie at the apartment of a guy who’s been in love with her since they were in the third grade.

But she does, she does, she does.

She wants it so badly she could cry. She counts on it more than she’d ever admit.

She knows he’s not going to last long and she doesn’t think she will either, especially when he reaches up between her legs to rub a firm thumb along her clit. She moves more quickly, grinding herself against him as he bumps her forward and grabs a fistful of her hair from down her back, pulling back, exposing her neck and jaw to him. She lands on her hands on either side of his face and he leans up to take her nipple between his teeth, biting gently and then more firmly until she moans out.

He kisses her neck, nibbles her earlobe, pressing deeper into her and rubbing her in constant, continual motion.

_ (It’s so wrong, it’s so wrong, it’s so wrong but it feels so fucking good.) _

She wants to give him everything. Her career, her relationship, her house, her heart. She lets it go, floating up above herself, her breath unattached from her body. It’s bliss, relief, all of the things that she doesn’t let herself experience during any other time flooding over her.

It’s gotten too strong, the connection between them.

It’s more dangerous than ever, deeper than ever, more intense.

It feels right and wrong and right again.

It’s release, to be his for these moments.

She doesn’t know if it’s her hair in his hands, the slight pain he’s inflicting, the way she’s slamming her hips down on top of him, or how his fingers move on her clit but suddenly she’s cumming, her back arching away from his mouth as she gasps and squirms on top of him.

She’s panting, all curves and feminine lines as his gaze travels up and down her, biting his lip as he finishes with a moan of her name.

He rolls on top of her and collapses against the cotton sheets.

“We’ve got to stop,” he breathes heavily into her skin.

“Stop what?” she replies coyly, still coming down off her orgasm, running her nails gently along his back. He’s sweaty and she doesn’t mind, enjoying the shiver that runs down his back in response to her touch.

“This,” he says, sliding off of her, shaking his head. She feels empty.

“Why?” she mews, stretching like a sedated cat. Her voice isn’t serious, she knows why she should stop, but in this moment, in the afterglow, she just doesn’t care.

His eyes are drawn to her but he snaps them back to his clothes.

“You know why,” he sighs.

“I blame Malia,” she says, wiggling her skirt back up over her ass. “She has to know what we’re doing and she does nothing to stop it.”

He turns to look at her disbelievingly, shaking his head. She sees disappointment in his eyes and steels herself against the weight in pit of her stomach.

“This is my fault. It’s our fault… your fault,” he mutters, pulling his jeans on.

He turns to leave and in a fit of jealousy, she hits him where it hurts.

“I know I’m everything you want,” she says, leaving her shirt unbuttoned as he turns at her words. She sees his eyes scan her chest, the teasing curves there that she knows he can’t resist, and he sighs with resentment and frustration. “You can’t quit me.”

“Why are you leading me on like this?” he asks desperately, his eyes sad and filled.

“I… what?” Her heart drops into her throat. He’d never said anything like this before.

Normally after an orgasm he was cuddly and caring and he kisses her forehead over and over, whispering into her ear about nothing and everything.

But now his eyes are sad, desperate, and it hits her with guilt stronger than she’s ever felt for.

“You’ve always been it for me, Lydia,” he says. His voice is different now, edgy and angry and the sound catches at the back of his throat as he talks to her. “And you… you know it, too.”

Her mouth gapes like a fish and she struggles for words.

“I warned you not to fall in love with me when this started,” she defends.

“And it was a decade too late then and it’s far too late now,” he snarls.

“Nobody forced your hand,” she says. “I didn’t force you to go with me. You could have said no.”

“What was I going to do? Turn down the girl I’d been fantasizing about for forever?” he stammers, his voice close to tears, “You should have given me time to fall out of love with you. I begged you. And instead you pulled me into the bathroom and let me… God, Lydia.”

The painful conversation flashes back to her through her drunken stupor of that night.  _ Please don’t fall in love with me,  _ she said.  _ Please, let me fall out of love with you. It won’t be long, just please let me…  _ he had begged. The words fade out into memory and shame rises in her.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” he repeats.

“Nothing else makes me feel this real,” she says, struggling to keep a grip on her emotion and now that she’s dressed, she feels like she can’t tell him anything.

“Are you  _ serious _ ? This whole arrangement makes you feel something that you like and you don’t even care what you’re doing to me. You don’t even care that this is ripping me apart.”

“Don’t do this, Stiles, please-” she begs.

“Why do you even come here?”

“Stiles… I-”

He looks at her with anger and frustration and she wonders how deeply she hurt him this time, how he could ever forgive her when she’s done so many shitty things. The stack up in her mind taller than her head and the weight of them all feels insurmountable.

“Does he make you happy?” he asks, his voice breaking. She’s standing in front of her in a flannel and jeans and he’s never looked more like him and everything inside of her wants to fall to the floor in sobs.

A pregnant moment of silence as she tries to compose herself.

“I don’t know,” she replies, hating the way her voice still breaks even when she tries to force it not to, the way they match. They’ve always matched, something deep within them made of the same material, and in this moment his breaking heart is fracturing hers too.

“Do you love him?” he asks, his eyes searching her face for some sort of sign. She wants to reach out and wipe away his tears, kiss him until she forgets all about the double life, until he forgets about all the ways that she hurts him.

“Not like…”

_ You _ , she wants to say. She wonders if he can hear it too, the word that obviously belongs on the end. He’s told her more times than he can count that he loves her and she doesn’t say it back.

“Why are you with him?” he says desperately, coming closer to her and she has to take a step back because when he’s this near to her, the world around her melts and she can’t have that happen, she has to be strong. “Why do you stay with him if you come crawling here every week?”

“He’s…”

He takes a step back of his own this time and makes for the door.

“You can’t even come up with a fucking reason that he’s good for you,” he says as he slams it behind him, leaving her alone in his dark room.

He’s right. She can’t.

Everything comes crashing down around her and she falls into a pile of sobs on his bed, pressing her silent mouth into the cotton of his pillow, desperately trying to keep quiet.

Somehow, she knows that he’s crying too.

It’s like coming down from a high. It feels like high school when she used to drink and smoke at the same time until everything became a blur, loving how disconnected from reality she felt. She’d bum a ride off of some lacrosse player and stumble up the stairs into her bedroom, trying to sleep while the room spun in front of her.

The partying had started as something that normal teenagers did.

She had been desperate to feel normal.

It had been something fun and continued to be fun and eventually it wasn’t fucking fun anymore. It was full of depressing moments of finding out she’d hooked up with someone she didn’t even remember and sitting on the floor of her en suite bathroom, puking her guts out until four in the afternoon.

This moment felt like that. Him leaving her and slamming the door made pain and regret creep up her throat like bile after a long night of too many shots. The peaks of her pleasure and depths of her pain deepening each other to the extreme, knowing how good it could be making the bad so much worse, sharper and acidic at the back of her mouth. Going from his words and his touch to his slam of the door and his abandonment.

She sniffles and moves to the mirror. She looks at herself: the smudged lipstick, mascara blackening and defining around her eyes, the way that it was all messed up now, the way that she seems messed up now too, how her whole life seems messed up now. She wipes at the tears under her eyes and wipes at the streaks of lipstick around her mouth and bites her lip when she still sees the sadness in her eyes. She pulls her boots on and tries to walk as quietly as she can into the kitchen.

“I can’t be the other man anymore,” Stiles says from the couch, the previously nearly full beer now empty. His voice is thick and she can tell that he’s been crying too. She pauses with her hand on the doorknob. “I can’t keep…giving you everything. I’m too… this has to stop.”

She takes a deep breath and leaves without a word. He doesn’t stop her.

She waits in the hallway to see if he follows her.

He doesn’t.

* * *

She doesn’t go over to his place the next Thursday.

Instead, she sits on the couch in the house that Justin pays for, drinking straight from an expensive bottle of Justin’s gin.

She passes out on the couch before he’s even back.

* * *

When she and Justin fuck on the couch during SNL, she thinks of Stiles’ face.

Justin finishes and she doesn’t.

* * *

Justin comes home early from bowling the next week and looks at her in surprise when he sees her on the couch, nursing a glass of wine.

“Hi…” he says slowly.

“Hey,” she says, her voice short.

She can tell he wants to say something and she doesn’t ask what.

He finally gives in and speak.

“That’s what you wore today?” he asks, the disgust in his voice thinly veiled as curiosity.

She looks down at her skirt, the short one she put on with the intention of impressing another man before she remembered in her slightly buzzed state that she couldn’t go over to Stiles’ house anymore.

She could care less about what Justin thinks of it.

“Yes,” she replies, anger flaring in her.

“Hm,” he says dismissively.

“What?” she demands.

“It’s kind of… skanky, isn’t it?”

She flashes back to Stiles on the floor in front of her, mouth between her legs, whispering incessantly how sexy she was.

“What’s your problem?” she snarls.

“I don’t want my girlfriend wearing skanky outfits,” he hisses, his arms crossed in front of him.

“If you have a problem with skirts, then  _ don’t wear them _ ,” she says, her voice dripping in heavy sarcasm.

“Real mature,” he laughs at her, like she’s a child, taunting and humiliating.

It’s a common theme, bringing up how young she is.

“Whatever, Justin,” she snorts. “I had a PhD by the time you got drafted to play on the bench.”

She turns to him and sees the emotion in his body, the angry crease between his eyes, his clenched fists.  Finally, he’s mad at her. His breathing grows heavier. It’s a welcome distraction. A perfect emotional punching bag.

“Don’t you normally go… out on Thursdays?” he says through grimaced teeth.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she says, flicking her hair over her shoulder in a way that she knows he hates.

He sighs like it’s hurting him to keep his emotions in check and she can see the mean streak in his eyes. Burly, blonde, and beefy he is and in moments like this, she’s glad that she kept her powers from him. She still has something on him that he doesn’t know about. He thinks he could overpower her.

“It’s supposed to mean that you go to Stiles’ on Thursday,” he growls.

“ _ What _ ?” Her eyes snap to him.

“How stupid do you think I am?” he laughs darkly.

It’s a situation she’d never thought she’d be in, being caught cheating on her boyfriend - with Stiles Stilinski of all people. How was she supposed to explain her and Stiles’ relationship to an outsider, to someone who hadn’t known them in high school?

“You knew?” she whispers.

He shrugs and she sees a flash of what made her drawn to him in the first place, the normality of him. How stupidly clueless he is.

“And you didn’t say anything?” she asks incredulously.

He crosses his arms in front of him and glares at her, the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“You’re such a spoiled brat,” he said, “but you’ve served the purpose of the relationship. You’re good on paper. I buy you anything you want and you put out. You’re decent in bed, too, I guess.”

She feels her heart pounding her chest, realization rising up her throat and pricking at the back of her eyes.

”I can’t believe you thought I didn’t know,” he laughs.

“Well, you’ve never been very astute,” she mutters. And he hadn’t been.

He laughs again and she takes a deep breath, willing herself to calm down.

“I shared your location with my phone months ago,” he mentions, nonchalant like he wants her to get angry, and for once, he manages to push a button that does. Anger bubbles up inside of her.

“ _ What?” _

_ “ _ I  _ knew _  you were fucking around behind my back. I knew you were fucking somebody else. Even when I was paying for all of your shit and taking you to places you’d never been. And  _ him _ ? God, he’s so fucking obvious. Drools over you like a pathetic little puppy.”

Her anger flares at his words about Stiles.

“God, you’re an idiot.” He laughs again and again and it echoes in her head, bouncing back and forth between her ears. “I thought you were supposed to be smart!”

She sits on the couch, slightly stunned, unsure how shit hit the fan in both of her relationships in the same month. It was what she deserved, hurting both of them, but the double whammy stung at her heart and in the back of her eyes.

A thought occurs to her.

“There have been other women, haven’t there?” she says, standing up with the realization.

His smile drops and his eyes widen.

She feels all the stupid, shallow, childish reasons she stayed with him crash down around her.

How they skipped all the lines at the hottest club downtown.

How he bought her a new car and endless amounts of jewelry.

How aggressive he was when she even talked to another guy and how convenient it was that he gave her a way to take her anger out.

How she didn’t have to think when she was with him because he never challenged her intelligence or her views or made her grow at all.

“I- no!” he exclaims a little too loudly.

“I can’t  _ believe _  you,” she growls. “Standing here all holier than thou.”

“Like you have any place to talk!” he snarls. “You’re a hypocrite if I ever met one. Who do you think you are? Acting like you’re all high and mighty.”

“I…”

“I should go beat the skinny fuck up for disrespecting me like that.”

His words send a cold, hostile chill down his spine.

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“What makes you think I’m joking? I don’t care if he’s a cop or whatever the fuck he is, he’s a piece of shit and I could take him on with a hand behind-”

“You touch one hair on his head and you’ll have no idea what hit you,” she says, her voice low and dark and… monstrous. She forces herself to stand up taller and meet his eyes.

“‘ _ No idea what hit me _ ?’” he taunts. “Who’s going to do it? Stiles? His pathetic best friend?...  _ You? _ ”

She stares back in place of a reply, her eyes narrowed, her arms at her sides with clenched fists.

“You can’t even take a smack in bed and you think you could take me?” he says.

He’s big in front of her, a full foot taller, a hundred pounds of muscle heavier. He comes in so close that she can smell his whiskey breath. She can practically feel his anger. She sees red.

“I don’t think,” she says, the desire to scream pressing painfully at the back of her throat, “I know. You hurt him and you’ll get it back tenfold.”

“Oh my God,” he says in realization, the expression on his face looking like he’d taken a blow to the head. “This isn’t just a fuck for you. You’re stupid enough to care about him.”

She doesn’t dignify his words with a response.

“You think he can give you what I give you? You’ve always been shallow and heartless and but I never thought you’d be dumb. I’d love to beat him to a pulp just to see your reaction.”

Guilt and fury twist together in her stomach like a ball of hot acid.

She did this. If he hurts Stiles, she’ll never forgive herself.

“I’m warning you, Justin,” she says warningly, “stay the fuck away from him.”

“You piece of shit,” he snarls as he shoves at her shoulders with the flat palms of his hand, hard enough to push her backwards into the couch a few feet back.

Now it’s her anger that she can feel, radiating off of her in waves, growing in power by the second.

“Justin,  _ STOP IT! _ ” she warns.

He comes towards her and a scream explodes from her mouth, her hands out in front of her.

He slams into the drywall fifteen feet behind him and cracks a hole with his shoulder.

“What the fuck!” he cries, clutching at the back of his bleeding head, looking at her like she’s a monster. She is, and in this moment she’s going to use it to her advantage. “What the FUCK!”

She takes a breath and squats in front of him, gripping aggressively at the fabric of his tee shirt, dragging him closer to her. She can see every freckle on his nose, every eyelash.

She’s so close that she can see the fear in his eyes.

She feels powerful and alive in a way that she hadn’t ever felt in his presence.

“This is over, Justin,” she says slowly, feeling strength surging through her veins. She wants to make him scared for his life, scared for his very existence. All the times that he’s mocked her and demeaned her flashing through her head, his threats and how badly he treats her fueling the anger surging through her veins. “You will not contact me again. You will not get within a thousand feet of Stiles. You try to come after me or my friends and I’ll rip you limb from limb.”

“What the fuck are you?” he asks, his voice full of disgust and confusion.

“If you go after Stiles,” she replies, her voice heavy and threatening, “I’m your worst nightmare.”

* * *

It takes a few hours to comprehend what had happened.

Stiles had all but told her to fuck off and she had broken up with her boyfriend.

The more she thought, the more she realized that she had reverted to her old, self-destructive behavior when she left Beacon Hills. Dating a guy for status and for popularity, sacrificing happiness for the things that didn’t really matter. But even with Jackson, she’d felt more. At least she had been in love with him. At least he had been what she wanted at the time. She didn’t even have an excuse for herself this time around.

Even her relationship with Jackson made this whole experience seem like an empty shell, a bad imitation of something that she thought that she wanted. Even the lies and the toxicity of that relationship made her feel more than a year with Justin had.

She felt numb and dull and lifeless, like all the color had been sucked from the world around her. She had been back to the state of mind she was in when she drank too much in high school, when she threw herself into her PhD, when she hooked up with anyone who gave her two looks.

She leaves that night, throwing a duffle bag together in minutes, ignoring the way that Justin is weeping in the corner; out of fear or sadness or embarrassment, she doesn’t know. They were over and she wasn’t looking back.

She tosses his phone into his lap as she leaves; he can call 911 if he needs to. She doubts he does and doubts even more that he will.

She spends the night at her mom’s house and the next day she comes back for the rest of her stuff, the collection surprisingly small. She spends hours carefully and meticulously folding the dresses and packing her shoes, knowing that Justin wouldn’t be home any time soon, probably knee deep in lines of cocaine and strip clubs.

In the moments that she’s doing it, the silk and cotton and tulle sliding through her fingers, she realizes that she hasn’t shed a single tear since they broke up.

* * *

She finds a new apartment, closer to her mom’s and closer to the only people that she knows. It’s normal and comfortable and although she has to buy all new furniture, she likes it. It feels more like home than the Boston apartment and the house she left ever did.

The landlord offers to paint the walls a fresh coat of white and Scott and Malia help her move all of her furniture in, the big heavy bed frame and mattress becoming easier work with their assistance.

The place is smaller than she’s used to, the vast, unending space that her NFL boyfriend’s wallet granted long gone. The fact that it’s nothing like the other places she’s lived makes her like it all the more. It’s a fresh start, a pristine beginning, a new leaf. Nothing here to remind me of Stiles or Justin or any of the other shadows from her past.

She cries herself to sleep the first night, a Thursday of course, fat, sad tears rolling down her cheeks onto her 400 count sheets, a housewarming gift from her mom.

She continues to work and buys herself a TV, spending her weeknights binging Netflix documentaries and 90’s sitcoms. She starts drawing again and hangs more new art up on the walls, feeling more and more confident with the fact that her life was starting to get back on track.

It’s lonely sometimes, especially Thursdays, when she aches for touch and connection and can’t help but choke back sobs when she thinks of everything that she messed up. There are weeks when her only companions are her coworkers and a bottle of wine. It forces her to evaluate her life and the way she’s been living it for the last few years.

Drinks and distractions just about sums it up.

She makes more of an effort to see everyone, the people from her past that she had tried so hard to forget. The rest of the pack slowly integrated her back into their lives and vice versa, and she has to force herself not to be paranoid and obsessive, remembering that they probably all know what she did to Stiles. It feels different, to be part of something bigger than herself again but she decides that she likes the change. It’s good, to be back around people again.

Most of all, it’s good to be around people she doesn’t have to lie to.

Stiles doesn’t call her and she doesn’t call him either, but every time her phone lights up she finds herself wishing that his name and goofy picture would show up on the screen.

* * *

It’s nearly 3 am when she finally falls asleep, after hours of tossing and turning, tears and anger equally present in her mind. She punches her pillow and rolls over, Stiles’ words running through her head like a broken record, the expressions on his face and his emotions heavy in the pit of her stomach.

She wakes a raucous knocking on her door that Saturday night. She looks at her phone and sees the time reading:  _ 3:53 am _ . Sunday morning actually.

Her heart pounding with the shock and nerves that one gets from sudden noises in the middle of the night and her mind racing a mile a minute, she sneaks down the hallway and looks through the peephole.

Stiles Stilinski is standing on the stoop of her apartment, looking sweaty and disheveled, his eyes glazy and bright and she feels a million emotions run through her.

She opens the door slowly and peeks outside.

“Lydia?” he says.

The way that her name makes her heart melt a little bit, like he’s missed her and needs her and while she loves it, she’s also confused.

“Stiles?” she says, uncertain.

“Yeah… m’ good,” he replies, blinking rapidly.

It clicks into place.

He’s drunk.

“Are you okay?” she asks, concern flooding over her.

“Why… why’d you start sleeping wi’ me?” he asks, looking at her like his eyes weren’t quite focused enough to see her clearly.

“I…” She struggles for the words as she rests her head against the semi-open door. “I don’t know, Stiles. I probably shouldn’t have done it.”

“So you lied,” he says, his eyes big and round and filled with tears in an instant. “You do regret it.”

This isn’t the kind of conversation that two people can have outside her apartment door at nearly four in the morning.

She shouldn’t let him in. She’s only going to hurt him more. She’s only going to be the reason for more of his tears. And even so, the sight of him upset outside of her front door stirs something inside her and like always, she feels an insatiable force, like a need to be close to him, to comfort him.

She sighs deeply and despite her better judgment, holds the door open.

“Come inside.”

* * *

He’s sitting on her couch, the one she stole from her mom’s bonus room, chugging his third glass of water.

“So… it’s over between you?”

She pulls a her robe on over her pajamas and goes to the kitchen to refill his glass.

She wants to answer  _ yes, it’s over, it was only ever you _ . She wants to tell him how she cried herself to sleep the other Thursday night, feeling like a part of her was missing. She wants to tell him that she just wants to hold his hand and hear his laugh and be next to him, but the logical part of her brain wins over.

“Why are you here, Stiles?” she says, leaning against the counter (linoleum, not marble), crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“I… I don’t know,” he says, running his hand along the back of his neck. “I was out with Scott and I thought it’d be funny to get really drunk and don’t get me wrong,  _ it was funny _ , but then I just… I just had to leave. It was like everything in me was telling me to come here… and Malia gave me your new address and…”

He looks at her and her heart speeds up. She pauses, drawing her bottom lip into her mouth.

“Shit,” he sighs, “I shouldn’t have come.”

She wants to tell him that no, he shouldn’t have come. She wants to tell him to fuck off. She wants to scream at him and yell how stupid he is. She wants to push him out the door and never let him back in. She wants to hit him. She wants to climb on top of him and kiss him until she feels weak from the lack of oxygen and then have him inside of her for the rest of eternity.

But she doesn’t do that either.

She has to face whatever was going on between them.

“You know,” Stiles starts. He’s always rambly and especially so when he’s drunk. It makes her smile, how much he’ll always be himself no matter how old they get. 26 year old Stiles is the same as 16 year old Stiles and 6 year old Stiles too. “Deaton, you remember him?”

She can’t help but laugh. “Yes, I remember Deaton.”

“He…” Stiles hiccups. “He told me about emotional tethers. He had a theory that it wasn’t just a connection or someone that could pull you back and hold you under and-”

“Stiles - the point?”

He glares at her and she bites her lip to stifle a chuckle. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, looking past her.

“He said that he thought it could turn into an actual tether, an actual tie between two people. Something… metaphysical or spiritual or supernatural that could bind people together.”

“Okay,” she acknowledges slowly, the building of realization thudding heavily in her chest.

“I think that he’s right. I think… I think that… the unspoken connection, remember when I said that all those years ago? I think it turned into something more. A pull. It’s… I think you feel it too. It’s like I can feel what you feel. And - and I can’t think straight when I’m with you and when you’re away, it feels… ”

“Wrong,” she finishes for him.

He looks up at her for the briefest of moment and he nods, looking back at the coffee table in front of him.

“It feels wrong but… so did the last year,” he admits.

“Yeah,” she agrees softly.

He sighs deeply and she feels it deep in her bones, the tiredness and heaviness that he feels. She’s tired too. Tired of lying to herself and to her friends and to him.

“I can’t do this to myself anymore,” he says, his voice heavy.

“I know,” she says, her voice breaking.

He looks at her through side eyes this time and she can’t look away.

“I can’t… not when, well, you know how I feel,” he says, his voice thick with emotion, “I can’t be… whatever the fuck I’ve been. I just can’t.”

He picks up the water glass and gulps down the last bit. She can tell that he’s trying to swallow his tears.

“I know,” she repeats, her expression matching his, trying to hold back her own.

“I’m sorry I came here,” he says with a throat-clearing cough.

It was like they were back in high school. He was pouring his heart out, every ounce of being showing her that he cared, second-guessing his actions and worrying about something. She was cold

“You can stay if you need to,” she says softly, rubbing her arm with nervousness. “I… you need to be safe.”

His eyes flick to her.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she says with a nod.

“Is the couch okay?”

“You can take my bed if you want,” she says, her voice hitching at the back of her throat.

“Nah,” he replies, as he starts to lean slightly, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“It wouldn’t be a-,” she tries to say but he interrupts her.

“Lydia, stop,” he says with a glare.

She searches his face for a lie and finds none.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asks, her voice smaller than she wanted it to be, feeling powerless.

“Yeah, ‘m fine,” he says, his words slurred, and he starts to fall towards the coffee table.

She rushes to his side and pushes him back against the couch.

“I said I’m fine!” he says, his voice aggressive again until he relaxes slightly under her touch.

“Let me help you,” she begs.

“Fine,” he says with a half-hearted eye roll.

She removes her hands from his shoulders, ignoring the way that their touch makes her heart beat faster and he looks at her with big eyes.

“You know… I got drunk in high school one time… and Scott couldn’t cause you know -” he puts his fingers up in air quotes “‘ _ werewolf’ _  or whatever.”

Lydia can’t help but laugh and Stiles grins before continuing.

“And… we were out in this random place, like a field or the forest or something, and I kept talking about you and how much I loved you… and I thought I was being  _ so _  slick because I was just saying strawberry blonde and 5’3 and you know, that could’ve been  _ anyone _ , and then Scott said something like ‘So… Lydia?’ and it just blew my mind, that he knew,” he says, his heavy head falling back onto the couch behind him, “Seems like not a whole lot has changed honestly. I’m still drunk and he’s still not and I’m still stupidly in love with you.”

“You don’t think anything’s changed?” she asks softly, resisting the urge to wipe the hair away from his face.

“Everything’s changed,” he says honestly and it hurts her heart.

“How’s that?”

“I mean…” he starts, “I know what your pussy tastes like now, so that’s cool.”

It catches her so off guard that she can’t help but laugh and he leans into her this time, resting his head on her shoulder. His touch makes her glow, a slow warmth spreading from her shoulder down to her fingertips. It calms her and excites her at the same time.

“Can I taste it now?” he says, half mischievous and half serious, pressing a kiss to the place where her jaw meets her neck.

“Stiles,” she laughs, pushing him away gently.

“Please?” he begs. Big puppy dog eyes.

“Stiles…” she says, her voice honest, “You’re drunk and in no condition to make a decision like that and… we still need to talk.”

“Fuck,” he says heavily, turning to the side and leaning against the arm rest. She pulls herself away and stands up.

“I’ll get you a blanket.”

* * *

He’s practically asleep by the time that she comes back and she lays it over him as nonchalantly as she can, trying to act like this wasn’t an intimate thing, like she didn’t feel the tether too.

She wakes up to the smell of breakfast in the apartment and thinks something is wrong until she remembers a weepy Stiles on her couch, sleeping peacefully and snoring lightly. She pulls on a robe in her own apartment for the second time in twelve hours and sneaks slowly down the hallway.

“Hi,” she says, shivering, wishing she weren’t awake at - she looks at the clock - 7:02 am after such a late night.

He turns around grins at her. Heat pools in her stomach.

“Good morning!” His voice is chipper and happy and upbeat and so very Stiles. How he manages, she just doesn’t know.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, folding the blanket that he used to sleep on the couch.

“Fresh as a daisy,” he says, flipping something with a spatula.

She has her doubts but walks into the small little kitchen anyways.

“What are you making?” she asks, peering to look curiously over the side of the frying pan.

“French toast,” he said with a shrug, “I was going to make pancakes or something but you only had eggs and bread and milk and so I figured this would be okay.”

She nods and looks around for something to do. “It’s great, thanks.”

She sits awkwardly at the kitchen table, lamenting the fact that she hadn’t remembered to switch her newspaper subscription yet and that she still wasn’t fully unpacked so there were no books, leaving her with her phone as the only form of entertainment as they spent a weird limbo amount of time together in her apartment.

She watches him thoughtfully over the screen of her phone, stealing glances at him. He used to do this in high school, make her food and it was always breakfast. Pancakes, usually. Sometimes waffles if he was feeling extra fancy.

But it was never french toast and the smell is both familiar and foreign right now.

As he cooks, he moves around the kitchen like he lives there, knowing exactly where everything is before she even told him. She wonders if his kitchen was set up the same way; she’d only ever been in the bedroom and occasionally in the living room on the couch. The thought that maybe they were that connected felt like too much to think about in that moment.

She scrolls through her feed and tried to focus on the pictures that Kira had posted from somewhere in Arizona.

The silence is oppressively heavy on her shoulders and her heart. Stiles’ movements and his presence feel scary and domestic and the reality of the situation swells up in her throat.

He piles breakfast high on one of her Anthropologie plates and sets it down in front of her with a glass of orange juice.

They eat without speaking, the forks and knives scraping the only sounds in the room and he leaves with a rushed goodbye as she starts the dishes.

* * *

He texts her the next day.

**S:**  Come over Saturday? I’ll make dinner.

**S:**  And we can talk.

Her heart speeds up in her chest and still, she replies.

**L:** Sure. What time?

**S:**  8 okay?

She says it is, even as she feels like she might throw up.

* * *

The drive to his apartment is nerve-wracking.

She drives the twists of the road, the ones she’d gone down more times than she could count and tries to think of anything but the way that this conversation could go. She knows every inch of pavement, every stop sign, every speed limit and the familiarity of the drive gives her no distractions.

Her mind is racing a million miles a minute. She doesn’t know what to expect. Things had gotten so complicated and messed up and … adult in the last year. There were so many things that could wrong. What if he wants to yell at her? What if he wants to cut it off for good? The thought twists tauntingly in her stomach.

There’s nervousness bubbling in her stomach so strongly that she feels nauseated. She tries to focus on deep, steady breaths but eventually just turns her radio all the way up and focuses on that instead.

She pulls up and parks next to his Jeep, the sight of it somehow calming her.

“Hey, Roscoe,” she says, patting the hood as she walks to the outdoor stairs. The walk feels ominous and she’s so nervous that she feels like she must be getting a glimpse into how Stiles felt all those years ago as he tried to talk to her with a massive crush.

Ten minutes and an awkward hello later he’s serving her food, spaghetti and meatballs, and he’s a better cook than he was all those years ago in high school, the times when he tried to make something for their late night study or mystery-solving sessions. It’s not breakfast food.

She doesn’t ask but he tells her about his job and the new case that he’s working on and how he’ll be up for a promotion at the end of the year. She’s proud of him and she tells him so and he blushes and runs his hand through the back of his hair and brushes it off like it’s nothing but it isn’t nothing. He’s living his dream and making a difference and besides her, life seems to be going really great.

He asks after her mom and she can’t help but roll her eyes, the overprotective but supportive mother was off with some new guy of hers on a weekend trip. Lydia talks about work too, about how the research lab that she works at wants to put her up for a new grant and she’s almost done with the proposal. She doesn’t say that she’s probably a shoe-in for it but she knows that he can tell anyways. He can read her like the back of his hand.

She can feel the tension between them growing, like a slow, steady flame smoldering in the hole in her chest. He can feel it too; she can tell by the way that his fingers tap faster and his words rush out more quickly, by the way he keeps glancing at her lips as she licks her fork.

On a deeper level, she can just feel it. She can feel him.

It can’t be normal, she has realized since she’s been apart from him. There is something physical between them that she can almost feel vibrating if she focuses hard enough. Maybe that’s what made them come together and what had made it hard to stay so far apart. It felt like tension but the good kind, like the power before you shoot an arrow.

There’s always been something there between them. An unspoken connection, is what he called it and she barely remembers it now. Maybe he knew, back then, before the tether, before near death experiences, that there was always going to be something sparking, sparkling between them.

The thought made her shiver, scared.

The more he talks, the more the old him comes out. Animated and sarcastic and goofy to an umpteenth degree and being here with him, best friends like they were, makes her heart ache with a desire that hit her like a ton of bricks.

She wants to scream from the rooftops all the things that she feels about him. How much she loves his smile, the little dimples and the way that his eyes light up. How his brain works in ways she doesn’t understand and how she loves it. How dependable and loyal he was. How everyone, Scott, Malia, Allison, Lydia herself, they all would’ve fallen apart without him. How he always figured it out..

The pull grows stronger and in a moment it’s almost too much to bear. As she thinks about taking his hands, he does it first. He takes her hands in his, holding them in his lap and she has to scoot in her chair to let him do it, their knees bumping and their faces closer than before.

She opens her mouth to say something but again, he beats her.

“I… I want you, Lydia,” he says solemnly.

“Stiles,” she breathes in response, scooting even closer.

“I want to be with you,” he says, his voice moving across his words more quickly now, “and I want you to be mine. That’s all I’ve always wanted.”

She sniffles, anxieties flaring inside her.

He’s close and she can see the amber flecks in his eyes and the way he’s looking at her makes her feel like his world must revolve around her, like everything she does must fuel his next action, like his first thought in the morning and the last before bed must always be of her.

She wants to give him everything and all the if’s she’s had in her mind don’t seem so far away now.

He’s looking at her like he always has, like sixteen year old Stiles did when she was crying in the front seat of her car. His eyes are honest and she can’t help but lean into him a little bit as his voice starts.

“Tell me you want it too,” he begs, “Tell me this isn’t just me.”

Her heart beats hard against her chest and she shakes her head.

“It’s not. It’s not just you,” she says, not meeting his eyes.

“But…” he sighs dejectedly, the end of the word lilting up like a question.

“I do want that, Stiles,” she tries to start.

“Then what’s the problem?”

She looks up at him, like it could be that simple. Like their nearly twenty years of history could be boiled down into one simple problem, a quick fix. One box to be checked and then they’d be good to go, all the baggage burned and skeletons neatly tucked away in the nearest linen closet.

“I have… so much power over you, Stiles. Too much power over you,” she says, the itch to intertwine their fingers growing. “And I could give you everything you wanted. But… what if I can’t? What if I just end up hurting you?”

“You’ve already hurt me,” he replies slowly.

“Hurting you again, then.”

“What if you don’t though?” he says, hope growing in his voice. “What if it’s perfect, and a combination no one ever expected but it totally works?”

“What if it doesn’t?” she insists. “What if I’m not… it for you?”

“Lydia,” he sighs angrily, “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

Tears well up in her eyes and she can’t stop them, pushing her chair back from him and crossing her hands to the opposite arm, wanting to shrink into a little ball. She’s powerless again, waiting for his next move and she hates this feeling, the way that he can fling her emotions around and all of the ways that she could hurt him too fly through her mind.

“Don’t say that,” she begs, “Don’t say that I’m stupid.”

“Wait, wait-” he starts, moving towards her. “I didn’t mean it like that-”

“This is what I’m talking about,” she cries, “We hurt each other. I’ve hurt you… so many more times than I can count. Even if I wasn’t trying. Me being in your life means pain being in your life.”

“What if -” he starts, passion rising in his voice, “What if it meant that everything good I’ve ever wanted was in my life now? What if it means that I feel right and whole when you’re with me?”

“I can’t do that to you,” she says firmly. “I can’t be that for you. I’ll just end up hurting you.”

“Relationships are  _ work _ , Lydia,” he says strongly. “We can make it work. Pushing down what we have won’t make it go away, especially if it’s a tether like we think it is!”

“But that’s what it seems like you want to do! Just wish this away, all the fucked up things that I’ve done and the people that… that have suffered because of me and all of my problems and-”

“Why did you even start it with me at Scott’s engagement party?” Stiles asks accusingly.

His harsh tone hurts her ears, used to years of doting words and reverent murmurs of her name.

“I… wanted to feel something,” she replies hesitantly.

“And so you used me,” he says flatly, standing up from his chair and pacing across the room.

“No… it’s…” She fumbles for the words. Five languages and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to explain it to him. “You’ve always made me feel like- like I’m alive and… ”

“So you did use me,” he says, confusion deep in his tone as he turned back to face her.

“It’s wasn’t… it’s  _ not _  like that, Stiles,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.

“Then what is it? Explain it to me.”

“I can’t lose you… and I can’t hurt you,” she tries.

“So you let me be the other man? How is that going to fix anything?”

“I never meant for it to be like that, it just happened and then it was too hard to stop and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and-”

“You don’t know what you’re supposed to do?” he says incredulously, his voice increasing in volume with each word, holding his arms out in disbelief. “Stop running away, Lydia!”

“I-I’m not running away!” she says resolutely, the words sounding weak to her own ears.

“Yes, you are,” he says, pointing a finger at her. “Don’t play that game with me. You know this is going to be hard and you’re running away from the work and the history and you’re scared about what could happen.”

“How are you not scared?”

“I love you and I’ve never doubted it,” he says firmly, the anger still in his tone but he’s being honest and that more than anything, after all she’s done to him, after all the pain she’d caused him, after everything they’d been through, makes her break down into full, body-shaking sobs.

In a moment, he takes her into his arms.

“It’s always felt too late,” she tries to get out, “You have to know how scary it is to feel like this when I never have before and I didn’t know that was I was feeling was possible and - and Allison wasn’t there.”

The sobs come harder.

“My best friend died,” she says as she takes big gulps of air and looks up at his heartbroken eyes, “and she wasn’t there to steer me in the right direction and she tried to tell me all those years ago, that I should feel about the person I’m with, like, like she felt about Scott but-”

“Lydia,” he whispers against her ear, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Let me finish!” she half-yells, “And, and you and Scott went about living your lives and I was back to a part of me I wanted to forget and everything was wrong and it felt like I was back in sophomore year of high school, c-clueless and alone. I ran away because I had to. There were too many painful memories there and I couldn’t escape them.”

He tries to soothe into her hair but all she can hear is her ragged breathing.

She attempts talking again and the words stick in her throat like thick honey, swelling up inside of her until she can’t breathe.

“It’s okay,” he says softly again and again, rubbing the flat of his hand along her back.

The panic swells within her and she feels sobs rip out of her throat again.

“Lydia, Lyds, it’s okay,” He’s whispering in her ear. “Just focus on my voice, alright?”

And so she does. She presses into his chest, burying her face into his shirt and gripping it with all that she has. The flannel smells slightly stale but it still reminds her of the scent of his laundry detergent, the way that she feels when they’re cuddling in bed, how he’s always smelled the same, when he comforted her after Meredith, after Aiden.

He’s always been there. He hugs her close and more than anything, it brings her back down, reminds her of where they’ve been, of how his arms around her feel like her feet being on the ground, how much he loves her.

“Why-why didn’t you tell me any of this?” he asks, a hand on her cheek pulling her face up towards his.

“I …  I don’t know,” she says, sniffling.

“Is this about Allison?” he asks, his voice soft and low. She can tell he’s tiptoeing, hesitant of upsetting her. It’s something he only does wit her.

“I don’t know,” she sighs deeply, burying her face into his shoulder. “It always goes back to Allison. To… those years..”

“What did she-”

The memory comes flooding back and all the emotions of the months after Allison do too. The words choke in her throat.

“It was so simple for her,” she says, remembering Allison, “She just loved and loved and did everything for people, you know? And she brought that out in me too and after she died it hurt too much to care about … anyone like that anymore. She said something to me about Scott, about how much she loved him. How she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And she told me that I must remember what that’s like to feel like that and… ”

She remembers the look on Allison’s face. Concern, pity… confusion.

“And?” Stiles prompts, his eyes confused and gentle and she wants to kiss him right there but she forces herself to keep talking.

“And I couldn’t,” she says simply, deep in the sound of Allison’s voice and the look in her eyes, “I didn’t know what it felt like to feel like I couldn’t breathe until I was with him. I didn’t know what it was like to look at the clock and wait until I could be with he person I loved. And she was gone and I forgot about trying to find it.”

His eyes darken and flick to her lips before meeting her gaze again.

A million memories flash before her eyes.

Stiles is playing in the sandbox with Scott. He’s sitting behind her in 7th grade science. He’s holding a pile of prom dresses at the mall. He’s carrying a massive box into her front door. His eyes are lighting up as she cheers for him on the sidelines. He’s screaming her name as he runs across turf towards her. He’s sleeping at the hospital as she recovers. He’s unraveling a red string from her finger. His hair is covered in snow and he’s holding a sword.

She’s kissing him on the floor of the locker room.

The way she feels about him overwhelms him. The moments all coming to peak in this one, all the feelings flooding her senses. How close he’s holding her in this moment. The beating of her heart in her chest, the way she feels like she can’t get enough oxygen no matter how much and how deeply she breathes.

“And… and then I did,” she admitted softly. “I remembered.”

She looks up at him, his thumb stroking along her cheek bone and probably rubbing off all of the blush that she had painstakingly and carefully applied. She knows every inch of his face and still, he’s so close, his gaze flicking between her two eyes, down to her lips, wiping the tears away with the pad of his finger.

“You did?” he says, eyes big and hopeful and she wonders if it’s possible for her to love him anymore than she does in this moment.

“I…” the words stick in her throat like honey and what she wants to say is even sweeter.

“Tell me,” he begs, her face in his hands.

She can feel the tether and if she focuses enough it’s like she can see it, coiled tightly between them and flickering with something she can’t place. It’s pulsing and growing and thickening and she can’t feel everything that he’s feeling, anxiety and love and glowing adoration, growing with each passing second. The tether, it’s pulling her closer towards him and it feels like the hardest thing she’s ever done to not have every inch of their bodies touching.

“When… I kissed you in the locker room… ” She takes a deep breath and meets his gaze, “that’s when it all changed.”

His pupils flare.

She can feel her pulse in her throat and she can’t look away, their eyes locked.

“And then…” he prompts, urging her on desperately.

“Everything, Stiles. I… I never said it back. I disappeared and I left you and-”

“You never said what back?” he asks softly, his voice so tender that she feels it in her core.

She feels like she did in that moment when he said it all those years ago, the way her heart sped up and came into her throat, the way that he looked at her and how it made her feel like she had to be the center of his universe.

“You told me you loved me,” she replies just as softly, afraid of breaking the spell.

“Are you saying that you loved me too?” he asks, his eyes big and wide and hopeful.

“I’m saying, ” she replies softly, unable to meet his eyes, “that I still do… that I  _ am _ . Still.”

It doesn’t make sense out loud but she can feel that he gets it. She looks up at him, their eyes meeting and the air crackles around them.

She sees all of their memories flash before her eyes again. They flash and she knows that Stiles is seeing them too.

“I never said it back,” she whispers, barely a breath of sound.

“You didn’t have to,” he whispers, his mouth millimeters away from hers.

She takes his jaw in her hands and kisses him firmly.

Stars explode and for the first time in her life, in forever, everything is perfectly lined up. She sees it, what he has been talking about all of these years, the way that she soars inside when they’re together, the way that the unspoken connection turned into something bigger, deeper, more meaningful. She understands why he isn’t scared of how much he feels for her and his fearlessness drives a stake of bravery into her heart.

Every moment of their lives brought them together to right this very second, the air crackling around them and his lips moving against hers.

She sinks into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his body closer..

“I’ve missed you so fucking much,” he says, his voice thick again.

“I missed you,” she whispers against his lips. He groans thickly and lifts her up by her ass. She wraps her legs around his waist and hikes herself up, desperate to feel close to him again, yearning for his touch. She doesn’t want to stop kissing him and he doesn’t seem eager for it either, the way he’s moving his tongue with hers. She can tell that he’s feeling the sparks in his stomach too, the quaking anticipation of her the coming minutes. He carries her down the hall and she’s feeling so many things at once that she has to remember to breathe, completely overwhelmed by the reality of being in this place with him.

They stumble to the bedroom, bumping into the walls and doorknobs on the way. It should hurt but it doesn’t; she can’t focus on anything save from the electricity she feels up and down her spine, to his mouth on hers.

He falls on top of her on the bed and his eyes are everywhere. He’s talking (he never stops talking), mumbling and muttering to him as he kisses on her neck.

“Stiles,” she sighs, trying to get him to focus on one thing at a time.

“Fuck, Lyds,” he groans and she wiggles away.

She scoots back and lays back on his bed, just like she has a thousand times before, and he slides her dress up, her breath hitching with each inch that it exposes. She missed him and she had missed this, the buildup towards the best moments in her life, the build up to his feelings for her spilling out over his consciousness and into his actions. The way that he looks at her, the way he touches her, everything about him whispers “I love you, I love you, I love you.” She must have been crazy to pass this up, to take this for granted.

She sits up slightly to wiggle the dress down off of her shoulders and chuckles lightly at the look of shock on his face when he realizes she didn’t wear a bra or panties.

It feels different now. They’ve fucked a thousand times and still, it feels different.

He knows that she loves him now. It had always been that she knew how he felt, the his love for her was as obvious as the sun and stars and sky above them, but now he feels it back, that unconditional love, and he’s so happy and overwhelmed that she can feel his glow, warmth pulsing off of his chest and towards her.

He’s always tender but tonight, she’s a fragile glass ornament in his hand; he moves around her with such care, observing the way that she looks as the light hits her from different angles, acting with intent so as not to smudge her surfaces. He touches her softly, with hesitant fingertips, teasing and stroking and slowly getting back into the feeling of having her beneath him. Weeks seemed like months with the pull between them. He slides her dress down her shoulder with the utmost care, kissing each centimeter of exposed skin with a hot, open mouth.

He’s always slow but tonight he’s reverent, finding religion in her curves and the taste of her. He keeps whispering her name over and over like a prayer against her neck, her chest, her stomach, her wrists, her thighs.

He’s always doting but tonight she feels worshipped, like every inch of him is humming with the need to pleasure her. She tries to unbuckle his pants, to kiss his neck, to run her hand southward, and he repeatedly pushes her away, getting more and more frustrated, like his only concern is her and how she feels.

Finally, finally, he stays on top of her and kisses her gently as he pushes slowly into her. She breathes against his neck, the smell of his body wash heavy in her senses, the feeling of their skin touching on all planes..

It feels like coming together and with each passing moment she feels the tether strengthen, the pull so great that it brings prickling tears to the back of her eyes.

This isn’t even fucking, she recognizes with a start; they’re making love and the realization makes her arch her back and wiggle against him. It sends fire surely down her spine, a heat that settles at the base and curls inside of her, pulling up hips against his.

She’s close already and he is too and she doesn’t understand, why it feels so different tonight than all of the other nights.

The tether between them materializes on the back of her closed eyelids, the way that they’re connected is something physical she can see now, a cord of twisted metal strands, three together .

He gasps above her as she tightens around him and he lets his head drop against her chest, his mouth panting against her pulsing heart.

He grips her ass and her hip and buries his hand in her hair.

“I love you,” he says, pressing his lips against the side of her neck

“I love you,” she murmurs back and the tether strengthens again. She can feel every inch of his emotion, every cell of his body against hers.

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until he says something.

“You okay?” he whispers.

“Overwhelmed,” she says, kissing the place where his shoulder meets his neck.

“Me too,” he admits softly, slowing down his pace of moving in and out of her. “You need a break?”

She runs her hands through his hair and enjoys the content purr that the movement elicits.

“No,” she says honestly, looking up at him, her world, everywhere that she was supposed to be. “No, this is perfect.”

He grins before she moves her hips against him and he groans against her neck.

“Finish with me, Stiles,” she whispers in his ear and he gasps against her, pressing into her harder. She spreads her legs wider for him.

She moves against him and he matches her movements. She can feel him tensing, pulsing, the change in his heartbeat telling her that he’s getting close. She reaches down between them to play with herself and he grows at the sight.

“Fuck, Lyds,” he pants, gulping down air in heavy breaths.

“Stiles, please,” she gasps.

They finish together, the peak of her pleasure bringing him along too, the tether tightening between them.

* * *

They lay together in his bed, many hours later. He's drawing circles on her palms with his fingers. 

“Scott told me once that people fall in love multiple times, that I had to learn to be my own tether,” Stiles whispers in her ear from behind, her back pressed to his front and his arms wrapped around her, hands clasped with hers over her chest.

“Yeah?” she replies softly, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

“But… I don’t think that’s true for me,” he says, taking one hand to smooth down her hair from around his mouth.

She turns to her back to look at him.

“No?” she breathes.

“I’ve fallen in love lots of times,” he says. Her stomach jumps into her throat.

"Oh?" she says unsurely.

“But it’s always been with you," he admits, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "You’ve always been it.”

She breathes his name.

"It's always been 5'3", strawberry blonde hair, IQ over 170," he says softly and once he starts talking, he doesn't stop. "It's always been you that kept me up at night and you that came into my dreams to comfort me when things went to shit and you that came to save me and-"

His words are intoxicating. She knew he was chatty but this something else, stirring something deep inside her.

"I love you, Stiles Stilinski," she says seriously, interrupting his words. "I haven't ever stopped and-and I'm sorry I hurt you like this." 

"I love you," he says, and a tear falls down.

"Are you okay?" she asks him this time, taking his face in her hands and wiping away his tears.

"Overwhelmed," he laughs, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on the top of her head. "I feel like I need to be counting my fingers."

"Like you're dreaming?"

"The best dream ever," he whispers, kissing her quickly.  “I’m serious, Lydia. This is… this is everything to me."

“I know, Stiles,” she says, pressing a soft kiss to his lips back. She knows because she feels it too.

“I just… I want you to know that,” he says.

She looks up at him and sees the worry and the doubt in his eyes. 

"I'm not going anywhere, Stiles," she promises, cuddling up to his chest. 

He kisses her again and a fire burns in her heart. 

The someone who could hold her under and who can bring her back.

Her unspoken connection, the strongest she'd ever experienced.

Her emotional tether.

Her Stiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this came from - JK, yes I do. It came to listening to The Weeknd's album "Trilogy." Leave a comment down below if you miss Stiles and Lydia as much as I do.


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